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Articles: Adoranten 2007

Barclodiad y Gawes new megalithic art, by George Nash & Adam Stanford
As part of ongoing research, the authors discuss the recent megalithic rock art discovery at the Barclodiad y Gawres Neolithic passage grave in Anglesey, North Wales. The discovery forms part of a much wider research agenda - the Anglesey Rock art Project (ARAP) which up until April 2006 had made four significant rock art discoveries in Anglesey (Nash et al. 2005). In terms of rock art assemblages elsewhere in the world, the Welsh discoveries can be considered relatively insignificant. However, prior to the Anglesey discoveries, only around 45 sites were known in Wales and of these, 35% of these associated with Neolithic burial monuments (Darvill & Wainwight 2003; Sharkey 2004, Nash et al. 2005; Nash 2006). The rock art from the majority of these sites comprise mainly single and multiple cupules (cupmarks) that are either arranged haphazardly or in linear patterns.

Cae-Dyni Cupmarks, by George Nash, Abby George & Laurie Waite
As part of ongoing research into rock-art and its association with Neolithic burial monuments in Wales, a team from the Clifton Antiquarian Club visited Cae-Dyni (CRN 14) in January 2006. This site, located within the coastal zone, east of the coastal town of Criccieth has in the past been considered a cist that has dated to the Early Bronze Age. However, we suggest monuments of this size, where the chamber measures 1.3m x 0.80m can still be considered megalithic and therefore earlier in date. This monument, along with eighteen others possesses cupmarks, either carved on the monument or close by on exposed rock outcropping.

Galician Rock Art. From the Past to the Present, by Yolanda Seoane Veiga
The first time we visited Sweden in 2002 to collaborate in the excavation and documentation of rock art in the region of Tanum (Bohuslän), we had a series of objectives, including studying in situ the characteristics of the rock art in the area in order to establish, from the perspective of Landscape Archaeology, the similarities and differences between the carvings from this area with those found in Galicia, as well as to learn from our experience in Sweden in work carried out around the carvings, to carry out an excavation some months later around a carving in Galicia (Santos and Seoane, 2005). At the same time as reaching these objectives, our visit was also intended to be a way of publicising information about other petroglyphs in the Iberian Peninsula.

Mountain Worship. From Prehistoric Alpine Cults to Mythical Cosmologies, by Umberto Sansoni and Liliana Fratti
Local history may remain confined to its own province and reveal little in and of itself, but when viewed in a larger context, given adequate time-and-frame comparisons, it may open up windows of insight into a world vision where that situation belongs as part of the whole picture, revealing a constellation which, together with others, makes up a universe.
Historical criteria have long since overcome the dichotomy between the official history laid out by the upper classes and based on major events, and a history of the lowly, the folks whose only voice was an unwritten code that got lost in time or is vaguely traceable in oral reports from indirect sources.
When comparison among signs or reports from a particular place is continuous and matches the lines of the great events, when the microcosmos meet with a broader vision, then we can read history in a coherent way.

New Discoveries of Rock Carvings and Settlements at Himmelstalund, by Per NilssonIn recent years the National Heritage Board has carried out archaeological investigations in connection with the rock art site at Himmelstalund. These investigations have been undertaken in conjunction with a protection and visualisation project organised by Norrköping Municipality. The aim of the project is not only to protect the carvings but also to emphasise the uniqueness of the place and make it more accessible. Settlement remains dating back to the Pre-Roman and Roman Iron Ages have been excavated and about a hundred new figures were discovered. While the main purpose of this article is to present the results of these archaeological investigations, it also hopes to stimulate discussion about possible connections between the settlements and the rock carvings.

Raised open hands: divinities not worshippers, by Adolfo Zavaroni
This article deals with several stelae and rock engravings widely separated in time and space, from Ukraine to Scandinavia and Italy, but the material I have examined concerns also Spanish and French petroglyphs and pottery of various countries. Of course I could not include all this material here.
My aim is to search for an interpretation of the symbols we find on the European petroglyphs dated to an age including the Neolithic and the Iron Age before christianization. I will not propose any hypothesis about the possible contacts between peoples, the direction of the spreading of symbols, or the reasons for the similarity of images and symbolism. I will use a “comparative method” similar to that of the historical linguistics which suggests comparisons between words yielded in the wide area of diffusion of the Indo-European languages, although these languages were spoken and written in very different periods covering the space of three millennia.

SvensktHällristningsForskningsArkiv - a database and an archive of rock carvings, by Ulf Bertilsson
Svenskt HällristningsForskningsArkiv – (direct English translation: Swedish Rock Carvings Research Archive) – a national project for constructing and establishing of a database and an archive for documentation and research of rock carvings at Göteborg university financed by RiksBankens Jubileumsfond and Riksantikvarieämbetet.
The increasing accumulation of documentation of rock carvings leads to an increased demand to take care of it, to put it into archives and to make it accessible to researchers and others interested. Simultaneously, the problem of the deterioration of the documentation itself has to be addressed and its preservation for the future be solved.
That is in a short summary the background for the need of a national project with the primary ambition to assemble old and new information about rock carvings in a database and to make it accessible for research, management and presentation purposes.